People For Peace, Not Land For Peace

JASON BRADLEY7 Jun 2011

The Muslim Brotherhood is coming. They are poised to win Egypt’s parliamentary elections in September and will be a new feature for the US and Israel to contend. By all indications, the Egyptian military will be an active participant in their coming to power. The MB will bring a conservative view of Islam to Egyptian society. Their style of government and leadership will be very similar to the Islamic Revolution that Iran witnessed. One of the cornerstones to their rule will be Islamic law, or Sharia law. Second will be the call for Palestine liberation. The former may raise problems on its own. The MB isn’t very popular, and a very small amount of Egyptians actually want a theocracy style government. And certainly none of the nation’s Christians want to live under Islamic Law. The Christian Copts are already experiencing growing attacks and harassment.

The second can be handled by making them own up to the seriousness of their grievance.

That has never been an easy thing to do when dealing with Arab governments. So how do you circumvent a waiting catastrophe? You do a people swap, not a land swap for peace. If these Arab fanatics are so concerned about the plight of Palestinians, we should present this simple plan. Of course, this would zap them of their main source of existence.

I propose a people-for-people swap. There are an estimated 1.6-2.3 million Arabs resident in the West Bank and 1.7 million in Gaza. These 3.3-4.0 million Palestinian Arabs would be swapped for 4 million or more Egyptian Christian Copts, funded by money from the G8 $40 billion aid fund for Egypt and Tunisia to insure that all swapped people are equally well-off or better off after resettlement.

The benefits are immediately clear. Israel would no longer have a Palestinian problem and 4 million Egyptian Christians would no longer live under fear of Sharia law. Ideally, even more than 4 million Egyptian Christians might be welcomed into the West Bank and Gaza, The resulting combined Jewish Christian population would strengthen Israel.

Palestinians would no longer live under Israeli occupation and could participate in the political life of the new Egypt.

The political structure of the West Bank and Gaza would follow that of the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions of China. For the immediate future the Christians would enjoy internal autonomy save for defense and foreign affairs which would remain in Israeli hands.